Narrative of a Voyage to Madeira, Teneriffe and Along the Shores of the ...

figures, if correctly drawn, represent the spinning process of the finer Egyptian yarns.*

“Making allowances for the false proportions of the women, and the spindles they are using, we might suspect that they were employed in untwisting coarse Chinese silk thread; drawing it out and twisting it again, a process known to the ancients; or, we might suppose that they had a process not unlike a modern improvement in power spinning, of making a thread rather coarse, and then untwisting and drawing it out and twisting again. For such an operation, their flax appears to have been well adapted; for it is very fine, and the staple very short, apparently from its mode of preparation, performed chiefly by pounding it with a wooden beetle on a stone, and twisting the flax into a rope at the same time ; by this plan, the blow being oblique, it splits the fibres, though it broke them at the same time, giving them very much the look and feel of cotton. Many of our specimens are so like cotton, that the best judges have been deceived by their unassisted sight; but when we have submitted the ultimate fibre to the microscope, we found it always to be exactly like the fibre of Irish flax, and altogether different from any kind of cotton, whether North or South American, Indian, Arabian, or Egyptian, with all of which it has been carefully and repeatedly compared."

F.- Page 144.

PHYSICAL HISTORY OF THE KABYLES.

Of the many different nations inhabiting the northern division of the African Continent, or that portion denominated by writers Atlantica, few have caused more discussion, or become, in later years, a subject of stricter investigation, than the Kabyles or Berbers. These rude and primitive people, who form a part of one great nation divided into several distinct tribes, but still preserving a sufficiency of analogies in language, manners, customs, and physical conformation, to prove their common origin, are by some supposed to be of Punic or Phænician descent; while others look upon them as the aborigines of the country, who, by intermixture with, or contiguity to, the Phænicians who settled on these coasts, adopted some

.“ We have heard such statements of the doings of the Commission, of which Rossellini was a member, in Egypt, that we can place no dependence whatever op his publication, unless, indeed, other witnesses confirm his statements. In this instance, Wilkinson is deficient."

of those traits and characters that have given rise to the former opinion.

Africa, as known to the ancients, was divided into four parts-Barbary, Numidia, Lybia, and Negroland. Barbary included all that district lying between the Atlas mountains and the Mediterranean, and extended from the point of the Atlas near Messa to Gibraltar; and on the west to Mount Meies, situate about three hundred miles from Alexandria.

Numidia, called by the Arabians Biledulgerid, or the Land of Dates; its boundaries were the city of Eloacat, about one hundred miles distant on the east; on the west, the town of Non; on the north, the southern side of the Atlas; and on the south, the sandy deserts of Lybia.

Lybia lay still further south, having the ocean on the west; the Nile on the east; and the adjoining territory of Negroland forming its southern border. Negroland was still more remote, but parallel with the former; its western extremity was Gualata ; and its eastern, Gaoga. Its southern boundary was unknown. Thus there were four great bands of country lying nearly parallel to each other; and beyond that it was a terra incognita. This is the description of John Leo Africanus. Marinol and Ptolemy have given a more complex subdivision.

John Leo gives the following account of the inhabitants of Africa :“ In ancient times, Negroland was the only inhabited country of Africa; at least Barbary and Numidia were for many years destitute of inhabitants, till the Tawny people settled in that country, who were called by the name of Barbar, an Arabic word, probably derived from Barbara, i. e. to murmur ; because the Arabians looked upon the African language as an articulate sound of beasts. Others will have the Barbar to be only the repetition of Bar, i. e. Desert; supposing Bar-Bar, 'to the Desert, to the Desert,' to have been the word among Ifricus's followers when they fled out of Arabia Felix.

“ These Tawny Moors are divided into five tribes--namely, the Zanhagi, inhabiting the western and southern part of Mount Atlas; the Musmudi, inhabiting the provinces of Hea, Sus, Guzula, and the territory of Morocco; the Gumeri, possessing the Barbary mountains upon the Mediterranean Sea, and the river Rif, which takes its rise near the Straits of Gibraltar, and runs eastward to Tremeson, or Mauritania Cæsariensis ; and the Haoari and Zeneti, who were dispersed all over Africa. These tribes are distinguished from one another by certain marks, and wage continual war among themselves. In former times, they had their habitations and tents in the field; every one favouring those of his own tribe, and labouring for their interest and common benefit. The governors of the country attended their droves and flocks, and the citizens followed husbandry, or some manual art. Ibnu Racco, who writes of the genealogies of the Africans, divides these people into five hundred several families. Though their posterity is run out into innumerable branches, and at that great distance from one another, yet they retain one language, called by them Aquel Amarig, i. e. the Noble

Tongue, which is the true African language, and branded by the barbarians for a barbarous tongue.”

Marmol says that “ Barbary is so called either from Ber, a name given to that country before it was peopled, whence the inhabitants were afterwards called Bereberes, and are still possessed of a city called Barbara, and a large tract of lands in Genehoa and Zinque; or, as some will have it, this name must be derived from the Romans, who christened it so by reason of the barbarity of their language.” This seems to be also the opinion of Dr. Prichard. In another place the same old writer states that “the African authors assure us that Barbary and Numidia have been long inhabited, but they are not agreed upon the first inhabitants. Some say an Asiatic people, expelled their own country, and finding no security in Greece, went and peopled Barbary. Others allege that the people of Phænicia, in Palestine, being expelled their own country by the Assyrians, and coldly received by the Egyptians, passed on to the Deserts of Africa, where they settled.

“But the African authors of the best note assure us that the first inhabitants of Barbary and Numidia, now called Barbarians, were five colonies or tribes of Sabeans that came thither along with Melec Ifrique, a prince of Arabia Felix mentioned above, to which six hundred families of Berebers, and the greatest lines of all Africa, owe their original. These tribes did first people the eastern parts of Barbary, and from whence they dispersed themselves over most of Africa, retaining the name of Berebers from Barbary, their first habitation; whereas the former inhabitants of Tingitana, Numidia, and Lybia, were called Chilohes. Though these five tribes lived first of all in tents of the fields, yet when they came to war with one another, those who were defeated and robbed of their flocks fled from the plains, where the conquerors remained, to the mountains, where, mixing with the ancient Africans and Getulians, they built houses to screen themselves from the weather.

“ This occasioned the difference between the Berebers that live in the fields, and those that dwell in houses; the former of which have the preference for riches and power; though both of them are equally zealous in keeping their ancient customs, and celebrating the honour of the original.” This division can be seen even at the present day, in the Kabyles who live in tents or mud houses in the open country, and rear cattle, while 'the Moors reside in towns, and follow trade, or are engaged in traffic or merchandise.

“ Besides these there was,” says Marmol, “a noted people in Africa, called Azuagues, who are now scattered up and down the provinces of Barbary and Numidia, and inost of them are shepherds, though they have some artizans among them that make linen and cloth," (in a manner similar to that in use among the ancient Egyptians. “They live upon mountains and hills, and nestle in little holes and chinks; and, notwithstanding their extreme poverty, are commonly tributary to the kings, or Arabians. The

African authors say they are Phænicians, expelled by Joshua, the son of Nun; who, being denied admission by the Egyptians, passed on to Lybia, where they built Carthage, 1268 years before Christ. And a long time after that, if we credit Ibni-Abraquyq, a great stone was found there, with these words engraven upon it in the Punic language :-'We fled hither from the presence of that notorious robber, Joshua, the son of Nun.' Before the arrival of this people, Asclepius and Hercules had reigned in Africa; but after the destruction of Carthage, before it was rebuilt by Dido, this people retired to the west part of Barbary, under Hermon, their leader, and then built Liby-Phænician cities, in which they still continued when the Romans invaded Africa."

Dr. Prichard gives the following solution of the term Barbar :

" The only way of explaining, with any degree of probability, so extensive a diffusion of the term Barbarii or Barbari, and, at the same time, its local application to the country and the people of the African coast, is the conjecture that Barbar was originally an Egyptian term or name given by the Egyptians to the maritime country on the Red Sea, or its inhabitants. The word might be derived, as Leo derives it, from Bar, a desert, were it not improbable that an Arabian name could have been adopted by the Egyptians the people so named not being Arabians. The Coptic word Bsesßler signifying hot, may be the etymon of the name, if it originally belonged to the country. Bogßig, as well as BigBwg, means to cast out. Could the people be hence termed Outcasts? These southern borderers on Egypt, probably ferocious Nomades, as are the Beshari at present, being dreaded and hated by the Egyptians, and their name being equivalent to that of Savages, it is possible that it may have been borrowed by the Greeks from the Egyptians in this sense. The Hindoos used, as it seems, the same name in both its meanings—both as a national appellation, which was extended, however, from the natives of the Barbary coast to other crisp-haired Africans, and likewise in the sense of outcasts or barbarians." This was also the opinion of Gibbon.

Dr. Shaw published a catalogue of Berber words; and, in later years, my esteemed friend, Mr. Hodgson, has given the most accurate account of the language of these people that has yet appeared.

“ The more,” says he, “I investigate the subject, the more I am satisfied that the idiom of the Berbers is not the remains of the ancient Punic, but that it is the same language which was spoken by the inhabitants of the northern coast of Africa, at the time of the foundation of Carthage, much corrupted, however, by the introduction of Arabic, and, perhaps, in this district at least, of Punic words and forms. The former are indeed so visible, that it is easy to perceive that they do not belong to the original language, from the peculiar structure of which they essentially differ. The latter, if any there be, it is not so easy to observe, as there are no remains of the Punic language sufficient to assist us in the inquiry. We may, perhaps, discover hereafter some traces of it, by comparing the

Berber of what was called Africa Proper, with the dialects of those parts where Carthagenian colonization did not extend. If the Punic idiom was ever incorporated to any extent with the language of the Numidians, in the vicinity of Carthage, or in the countries under her dominion, it must have produced a marked difference between their dialects and those of the more distant tribes, which cannot escape the inquisitive eye of philologists.” Speaking of the Berber language, Mr. H. continues, “ If these significant names extended east and west, from one end of the African continent to the other, and from its northern coast, south, even to the Desert of Saara, where no Phænician colony can be supposed to have existed, it would be clear, independently of the inferences that may be drawn from the different structure of the two languages, that our Berber could not be the Punic, as Marsden and others have supposed, but was the language of the Autoch. thones, or the ancient inhabitants of the country, which the Phænicians who founded Carthage, and their descendants, were obliged to learn and to speak in common with their own, and which procured for them the appellation of Tyrii bilingues.” And he concludes his most interesting memoir on this subject, by drawing a parallel between it and the ancient Egyptian. “At every step," says he, “ of my investigations, new proofs accumulate in favour of my hypothesis, that the Berber is the original language of all North Africa, including Egypt and Abyssinia ; for, with the Coptic it has a positive affinity."— Transactions of the American Philosophical Society. Vol. iv. 1834.

This has opened a new and most inviting field for future investigation, which, it is to be hoped, will not be lost sight of, more particularly as the word Berber is found written in the hieroglyphic character on some of the very early Egyptian monuments; and we have every reason to believe that individuals of this people are figured in the ancient Egyptian paintings. The osteological characters of the skulls belonging to the Berber race, are but very imperfectly known. I do not think that the characters and appearance of this people, as related by M. M. De Spix and Martius, who made their observations at Gibraltar, are at all applicable. For, although many Moors and natives of Tangiers came across the straits daily to market, very few of the Kabyles or Berbers ever leave their own country. In colour, these people vary from a dark brown to a tawny yellow; have thin lips, long oval faces, strait black hair, narrow, but not very retreating foreheads, and scanty beards. Those of this race I had an opportunity of observing, were particularly lean and bony, dirty and ill-clad.